Education: What is the best way to deliver school accessories to the world’s most rural areas?

From 2015 till date we have delivered more than 10 thousand school bags with accessories to children in rural Afghanistan with zero administrative cost involved. We adopted an innovative approach to do this in order to minimize the cost and maximize the impact of our work. Today, we have a deep understanding of how this process can be sustained and further grown throughout Afghanistan and beyond.

Partner: Boum e Dana, the non-profit affiliate of Awal has acquired an innovative approach to getting school supplies to kids in rural Afghanistan. The campaign is funded and all operations are conducted by individuals – no organization involved. The latest school bag campaign was completed for the school year of 2017 in March in the province of Sar-e-pol highlighted below.

The process: The below graphic explains the process that we took through to deliver ten thousand school bags to children in Sar-e-pol province in Afghanistan.

About Sar-e-pol and Education Stats: with 76 percent population living in rural areas of the province and a net attendance rate of 43% in the primary level and girls to boys’ net attendance ratio is 93% at primary level of school. Meaning for every 10 boys there are 9 girls attending primary school at the age category for the primary school. This is above the national average of 71% girls to boys’ net attendance ratio. Meaning there is a positive attitude towards girls’ education in the province. Factors that can deter child’s school success are socioeconomic status of family where Sar I pul is below average poverty national line. Meaning most families can’t afford to send their kids to school because they use them for income generation or can’t afford to bear the personal costs of sending the child to public school. On average by 18 years of age an Afghan adult has 2.8 years of formal education, whereas average 18 years old adult in Sar i pul has only 0.9 years (9 months) of formal education. This shows the huge disparity in education attainment of children in Sar I pul. The picture gets even dimmer when we narrow to net attendance of children in primary schools. Sar I pul has 43.6% primary school children attending school in 2014 when national average is 54.4% of children attending primary school. What is more disappointing that net attendance rate for primary school has dropped from 60.1% in 2012. These are not the only reasons why Boume Dana flying over school bags, supplies and storybooks to Sar I Pul. The province has striking better gender representations in area of education. Female literacy rate – age 14+ is 13.6% which is 6.7 percentage points higher than national average. Meaning more women and girls can read in Sar-e-pol compared to national average.

Read more about the campaign at: http://boumedana.af/campaigns/view/14